This invention relates to the orientation of articles of manufacture, and relates more particularly to a mechanism and method for orienting a series of similar articles of asymmetrical size and shape into a particular position, or attitude, and in single file in a materials-handling process, to facilitate the performance of a subsequent operation such as labeling or packaging of the articles.
In the past, there have been numerous proposals of orienting methods and mechanisms, for use with a variety of different products. For example, bottling plants use rail systems to arrange bottles upright in rows, and a somewhat similar method is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,908,855 for orienting generally cylindrical cups on a conveyor belt. Counter-rotating and downwardly inclined shafts can be used to orient oblong articles, as illustrated by U.S. Pat. No. 4,274,531, with a variation shown in Pat. No. 2,403,862 for oblong articles like ammunition cartridges.
Other mechanisms and methods using rotating drums or tubes have been used for the separation and alignment of articles from a bulk supply to a single file. For example, a conical drum with internal wings is proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,984,678 to separate packages in a flow from a bulk source, but with no apparent concern for orientation of the packages in any particular position. Pat. No. 3,426,881 recognizes the possibility of using a rotating feeding tube for articles to be aligned, but only as a first step leading to rotating conveying rollers for accomplishing alignment of the articles. Pat. No. 2,822,076 uses a rotating drum to convey balls or pellets longitudinally of the drum, with a special spreader at the discharge end of the drum and with no concern for orientation of the articles.
The present invention is concerned with the orientation of asymmetrical articles such as plastic pipe fittings in the form of "L"'s, "T"'s, adaptors, caps and the like, which are of irregular shapes making prior orientation methods and mechanisms unsuitable. These articles must be handled in very large numbers by manufacturers or suppliers, and require orientation for labeling, stamping and other secondary operations. At the same time, such articles are relatively inexpensive so that manual handling can be prohibitively expensive. Accordingly a need has existed for a method and mechanism for receiving such articles in random positions from a bulk supply and orienting the articles into a given position or attitude preparatory to the performance of another operation.